Platinum's Ninja Turtles game vanishes from sale

Given that Platinum make some of the finest action games going and that only some of them make it to PC, one of them (temporarily?) vanishing from sale on PC should get me all het up. But eh, it’s only Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants in Manhattan [official site] that has vanished from stores, and that’s a bit bum – certainly no Metal Gear Rising. Besides, this happens all the time with licensed games published by Activision, and they often return just as unexpectedly as they vanished.

Let’s barrel on through this so we can gab about Platinum’s Nier: Automata, which is coming to PC and looks totally wizzo.Right! As Eurogamer note, Mutants in Manhattan has been pulled from sale on Steam and is gone from console virtuastores too. SteamDB tracks Activision fiddling with the Steam page’s guts on Wednesday. This happens a fair bit with Activison games based on licensed properties but sheesh, Mutants in Manhattan only launched in May. Some of Activision’s Spider-Man games have vanished too.

Activision haven’t said anything about this – and tend not to, on the many times it’s happened before – but it seems likely it’s down to licenses expiring rather than a whim of Ian Activision to spite people who wish to give him money. Sometimes these games return to sale, sometimes they… who knows where they go?

Activision’s Deadpool game, for example, vanished from sale at the end of 2013 before returning in 2015. Though then they may have been extra-motivated by the Deadpool movie coming up on the horizon. Point is, these games come and go, and everyone who bought TMNT can still play it – it’s not removed from their libraries. Fingers crossed that, should it return, TMNT won’t be muffed up like the Marvel: Ultimate Alliance re-releases.

Anyway, stuff that, let’s talk Nier: Automata. Platinum have joined up with Square Enix to work on the sequel to the unconventional 2010 console action-RPG. It’s due this year and looks weird/wild. Platinum’s work with other people’s stuff can be great – look at Revengeance! – or bland – look at TMNT or Legend of Korra – and thankfully Nier seems another good’un.

Here, check out this video with prolific Platinum Let’s Play man Chip Cheezum going through the demo that’s out on PlayStation 4. You get to whack a massive deathbot with its own arm.

I did e-mail Squeenix’s marketingmen last year to ask if the NieR demo was coming to PC; I never heard back. O-kay.